April 17, 2015
Dear Everyone:
I spent all day yesterday in
Sacramento, attending the local ARMA
Chapter’s annual Records Knowledge Conference.
Apparently, this is something the
Sacramento Chapter has done
every year for some time now.
It might explain why so few people from that Chapter would be
willing to drive all the way to
Milpitas for the Spring Seminar just
last month.
For one thing: Very long
drive, in commute traffic, no less.
For another: The
Spring Seminar cost $95, if you registered early enough.
The Records Knowledge Conference was totally free to the
attendees.
The Spring Seminar provided breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack.
The Records Knowledge Conference provided urns filled with tap
water and glasses. They cut
us loose for an hour for lunch, but downtown Sacramento abounds with
“quick places to eat”. Not
cheap, but relatively quick.
As for the actual content of each event:
Lots of knowledgeable people speaking knowledgeably about Records
and Information Management (RIM).
And Information Governance (IG).
And Trusted Systems.
And-fill-in-your-own-favorite-buzzword-here.
In other words: A whole
bunch of “Preaching to the Choir”.
Not much in the way of Practical Help, unless you count meeting
Vendors who would just love to come in and sell you their latest
Software Solution to Solve All Your Problems.
Of course.
Ask a salesperson if their product can do anything in particular, and
the answer is always, “You bet!”
Later, when you’re on the phone with “Technical Support”, the
answer is, “Yeah, there’s a way to do that.”
But first you need to
duct-tape a
tricycle to your forehead and…
Nevertheless, it was a full day of networking with other RIM-types, plus
about five to five-and-a-half hours of Continuing Education credits to
keep my Certification current.
What more could one ask?
It was while I was in the Conference, when I happened to look something
up on our Mt Diablo Chapter Website, that I discovered that we had been
hacked. Hacked!!!
Apparently, this happened once before, early last month, just before the
Spring Seminar. In fact, our
Webmaster at the time, “Clancy”, said he was going to use it as an
opening for the Seminar, which was nominally about Security for
Electronically Stored Information (ESI).
Then he didn’t.
He also treated it like a big joke.
As for the “hack” itself.
The hacker simply replaced the existing Landing Page, the one a visitor
sees automatically when they go to the Site, with a page of their own.
The false page consisted of a photo, linked to a
YouTube file,
and a “message” referring to the
current unrest in the Middle East.
No actual damage to the Site itself.
Not like Chinese/Russian programmers earnestly trying to get a
person’s financial information in order to drain their accounts.
Why do it? The hacker would
say that it was to “bring attention” to the issue-du-jour.
In reality, the reference to whatever is simply a “justification”
for their malicious behavior.
The hacker does it for the temporary illusion of power, which the
hacker enjoys. Period.
It wasn’t much trouble to “fix” the “problem”.
When I got home, I uploaded a new copy of the Website’s real
Landing Page, bumping out the malicious one, and that was that.
I also notified “Clancy”, since he “owns” the Site, along with
other ARMA Chapters in the Pacific Region.
He didn’t seem to think it was much of anything to worry about.
In fact, he said the Utah Chapter got hacked by the same “message’ as we
did. Good to know we have
company. In the meantime, I
created a new folder on the Website with a backup copy of the Landing
Page, so the next time this happens, I can “fix” it from anywhere, as
long as my phone can get to the
Internet.
Which reminds me: Time to
get a new phone before the two-and-a-half-year-old one suddenly dies on
me.
Love, as always,
Pete
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